"American Sniper"

I went with Joe the Plumber and saw 'American Sniper'. A very well done movie, but Chris Kyle is such an unreflective person - basically just a pure warrior on steroids - that the movie comes very close to being about absolutely nothing at all. Just very, very, very loud sound and fury, signifying nothing.

The Michael Moore critique, that being a sniper isn't honorable, missed its target. In urban warfare snipers are necessary to provide cover and thus have value. The warrior part didn't bother me very much. What bothered me was the utter lack of interest in Iraq. (Kyle has won a reputation of being a liar too; not that it mattered much in the movie).

There is a long history about celebrating pure warriors, but it's important to note they don't make much of an impression on history. When the Romans departed Britain after hundreds of years, it was almost as if they had never been there at all. When the Americans finally leave Iraq, it will be almost as if they had never been there at all. Americans never cared about Iraq and care even less about it now. All that blood and treasure, for what, no one can say.

And we're supposed to not notice that the opposing sniper Mustafa fights on behalf of the Sunnis early in the movie, and the Shias late in the movie. In the context of the movie, this egregious error doesn't matter, but the fact that it doesn't matter is the entire problem. It's like a World War II movie that can't distinguish between Japs and Nazis; between the Atlantic and the Pacific. These distinctions do matter!